A passively-fed methanol steam reformer heated with two-stage bi-fueled catalytic combustor

► A bi-fueled catalytic combustor was developed to heat a novel passive thermally-controlled MSR. ► A u-turn-channel combustor fueled with either methanol or hydrogen made uniform temperature. ► This novel reformer system yielded satisfactory performance in a two-stage, bi-fueled process. ► Steady operation of the above process yielded 95% methanol conversion with 1.04% CO concentration.